Communicate, persuade, collaborate, sell to live a richer life

July 25, 2010

“Out beyond the ideas of
right-doing and wrong-doing there is a field – I’ll meet you there.” ~ Rumi

“It hits
a spot, doesn’t it?It suggests
that not being right (or wrong) is a place we can choose to go to,” wrote Sarah
Wilson after reading Laura Munson’s book on how she chose not to retreat or
retaliate when her husband said he was leaving. Instead Laura chose to be calm,
still – and yes, sometimes quite scared.

“If your
partner said that to you, chances are that would be the start of a conversation
--- an ugly one,” wrote one of my favorite reviewers, Jesse Kornbluth.

Instead she said, “I don’t buy
it.”

Her story was the most
forwarded, shared and debated Style column in The New York Times all year.

“I was
faced with a choice, wrote Laura, “I was going to let this take me down, or I
was going to learn to base my happiness on something that was within my
control.”

Adds
Sara, “That it just exists, once we drop knee-jerk judgment, and is entirely
accessible. If. We. Just. Choose. It.”

This is
not an instinctive nor an easy approach yet it is worth practicing. That is to
choose not to suffer or to retaliate against someone dear to me right after he says something toxic- or
doesn’t speak up or act in a situation where I relied on his support – or at
least their understanding.Good men know this.

My
reacting harshly out of hurt usually stiffens the spine of the other person in
their righteousness. They respond defensively and feel greater justification
for their actions.This hardens
our hearts towards each other, making it increasingly difficult for either
“side.” By then we do see sides in the situation, so we move farther
apart.Through that lens of
protective distance we are more inclined to see how the other person is wrong
and we are right.

One
hard-learned truth I tend to forget:

Choosing
to respond to the decent actions in others and to let the rest go seems to be
the most likely way to stay connected to the better parts in each other. Live
strong is not only an apt motto for Lance Armstrong but a wise maxim for us all
to accept frailties in others and to livefrom our strengths.

May 09, 2010

Hearing of the death
today of a friend’s son in a war zone I was struck again by the many feelings a
Mother’s Day evokes and how comforting others is as vital as celebrating on
this day. Here’s my related story to share (bet you have some too).

''I had a doorbell
moment this week.'' Patricia told Tracy.

Both have sons serving
in the same Marine unit in Iraq. Patricia is describing the fear that grabs her
the moment her doorbell rings unexpectedly, thinking that the officer on the
other side has come to tell her that her son is dead. Tracy understands.

Hint One: Through shared
experience, expressed aloud, we adopt “shorthand” expressions and feel
understood, closer and comforted in that familiarity.

~

When Tracy’s son,
Derrick was deployed, she knew that those who would most understand her
feelings were other mothers in the same situation so she started a support
group.

“Draped over a banister
in Tracy's house was an unwashed T-shirt Derrick had dropped during his last
visit home. I thought Tracy was apologizing for her housekeeping, which I had
already seen was much better than mine, but she cleared her throat and said
that what I needed to understand was that she hadn't washed the T-shirt because
if the Marine Corps has to send you your deceased child's personal effects, it
launders the clothing first.

“Tracy's closest friends
in the world right now are other parents whose sons and daughters have served
in Iraq or are serving there now.”

Hint Three: Expressing
vulnerability as you feel it can create an opening for others to do likewise,
bring you closer, in the moment and over time.

~

“Tracy knows that the grandfather clock in Patricia's house chimes
nine times when the other clocks say it's noon because the grandfather clock is
set to Baghdad time.

Tracy
knows that Patricia has figured out how to tell if someone is in her driveway
by squinting at the reflection off a certain glass-covered picture in the
dining room, so that if it should ever be two men in uniform, Patricia will
know they have arrived before they start ringing the bell and before she is
obliged to look directly at them and hear what they have come to say.”

Hint Four: The specific detail you share paints the general
picture that listeners will see in their mind’s eye and will shape how they
will feel and remember what you say.

"One
measure of friendship consists not in the number of things friends can discuss,
but in the number of things they need no longer mention."

May 05, 2010

Like saying"I don't beat my wife"Obama's "will
not" statements regarding the inept attempted Times Square bombing puts the emphasis in
the wrong place in his first two sentences (I humbly suggest) by inadvertently
bringing to mind the fear factors rather than speaking from strength in the
positive as he did with the second two statements, beginning, "We
will..."

Obama said "We will not cower in fear. We will not be
intimidated... We will be vigilant. We will work together." Public
figures are taught to avoid such defensive-sounding soundbites or answers to
reporter's questions and to, instead, state the positive, strong and pro-active
mental image they want to instill in others' minds.

This is an uncharacteristic lapse in Obama's usual responses to situations.

One of the most vivid, credible ways you can
stick an image in someone's mind is by comparison.

Yet it is vital to recognize the difference between worry and fear. How, for example, can we know when a fear for
personal safety is justified and when a worry is sapping our spirit and making
us see the world simply as a dangerous place?

“Our fears are
fashioned out of the ways in which we perceive the world,” wrote Gavin Becker,
author of The Gift of Fear:Survival Signals That Protect Us From Violence.

Better to learn how to recognize when someone’s hostile or other
less apparently dangerous actions are, in fact, a danger to you, so you can act
to protect yourself, and not let unfounded fears and worry contaminate your
life.

What can we do?Revise FDR’s advice, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself” by
using our gut instincts well, with this variation:“There is nothing to fear unless and until you feel fear.”

Whenever you’ve felt profound fear, it was linked to the presence
of danger, imminent pain or death.

Said DeBecker in a National Public Radio interview, “When we get a fear
signal, our intuition has already made many connections.When you feel fear, try to ‘link’ it
back to a past situation where the feeling that was similar to see if your fear
is, in fact, justified.”

When you feel it, take notice to find the link back to see if you
need to take action.How rational
are our fears?In the 1960s a
study was done on what single word evoked the greatest psychologically strong
reactions of fear.The study
included words like spider, snake death, rape, murder and incest.Shark evoked the strongest
reaction.

But why?Sharks
rarely come in contact with us.Three reasons:the seeming
randomness of their strike, the lack of warning for it and the apparent lack of
remorse.

Yet man is a potential predator with far more abilities to
approach, disguise and deceive.While the media often portray human violence as random, de Becker points
out how it seldom is, and how you can anticipate the patterns in most cases, if
you listen to your instinct of genuine fear and take action.

DeBecker’s book describes how you can better
protect yourself by learning to recognize and act on the intuitive signals you
pick up but reject as unfounded.

Worry, on the other hand, is the fear we manufacture.

Worry, anxiety, concern and wariness all have a purpose, but they
are not fear.Any time your
dreaded outcome cannot be reasonably linked to pain or death and it isn’t a
signal in the presence of danger, then it really should not be confused with
fear.

Worry will not bring solutions.Worry distracts from finding solutions.

See it as a form of self-harassment.

To free yourself from worry sooner, understand what it really
is.Most people worry because it
provides some secondary reward such as:

• Worry is a way to avoid change; when we worry, we don’t do
anything about the matter.

• Worry allows us to avoid admitting powerlessness over something,
since worry feels like we’re doing something.Prayer also makes us feel like we’re doing something, and
even the most committed agnostic will admit that prayer is more productive than
worry.

•Worry is a cloying
way to have a connection with others.Worry somehow shows love.The other side of this is the beleif that not worrying about someone
means you don’t care about that person.As many people who’ve been worried about know well, worry is a poor
substitute for love or for taking loving action.

• Worry is a protection against future disappointment.After you complete an important project
where the success of your approach won’t be known for some while, for example,
you can worry about it.Ostensibly, if you can feel the experience of failure now, rehearse it,
so to speak, by worrying about it, then failing won’t feel as bad when it
happens.

But how would you want to spend the time while you find out:worrying, playing or initiating another
action on another endeavor?

For some people, worrying is a “magical amulet”, according to
Emotional Intelligence author, Daniel Goleman. Some people feel it wards off danger.They truly believe that worrying about
something will stop it from happening.

Most of what people worry about has a low probability of
occurring, because we tend to take action about those things we feel are likely
to occur.This means that very
often the mere fact that you are worrying about something is a predictor that
it isn’t likely to happen.

The connection between real fear and worry is similar to the
relationship between pain and suffering.Pain and fear are necessary and valuable components of life.Suffering and worry are destructive and
unnecessary parts of life.Worry
interrupts clear thinking, wastes time, and shortens your life.

When worrying, ask yourself, “How does this serve me?”

To be free of fear and yet still get its gift, consider these
techniques:

1. When you feel fear, listen.

2.When you don’t
feel fear, don’t manufacture it.

3. If you find yourself creating worry, explore and discover why.

We Choke on Anxiety

Anxiety, unlike real fear and like worry, is always caused by
uncertainty.it is caused,
ultimately, by predictions in which you have little confidence.If you predict you will be fired and
you are certain that your prediction is correct, you don’t have anxiety about
being fired, but about the ramifications of losing a job.

Predictions in which you have a high confidence free you to
respond, adjust, feel sadness, accept, prepare, or to do whatever you need to
do.

You can reduce your anxiety by
improving your predictions, thus increasing your certainty.It is worth doing, because the word
anxiety, like worry, stems from a root that means “to choke,” and that is just
what it does to us.

Our imaginations can be fertile soil in which worry and anxiety
grow from seeds to weeds, but when we assume the imagined outcome is a sure
thing, we are in conflict with what Proust called an inexorable law:“Only that which is absent can be
imagined.”In other words, what
you imagine -- just like what you fear -- is not happening.

September 06, 2008

In “one fatal keystroke” Rose Zory, the Chief People Officer at Carat Mediasent an “for top management only” email on the messaging managers should use when firing (oops, rightsizing) some employees. She sent that email to every single person in the company. Carat is Europe's largest media group, by the way. It provides advertising and public relations services, expertise it badly needed at that point.

June 06, 2007

YesterdayZakiaZaki was shot seven times, including in the chest and head, as she slept with her 20-month-old son at her home north of Kabul, Afghanistan. Her three year old son witnessed her death, when three men armed with pistols and rifles, broke into her home and shot Zaki into the bedroom.

As you may imagine, women journalists in Afghanistan are extremely rare. Yet, just a few days ago a woman newsreader there was also killed. "Authorities" are making vague statements that the reason for her killing was "family-related".

June 02, 2007

Whatever we praise we encourage to flourish. Whatever we criticize or "simply" snub goes deeper.

Each moment we choose our emotional response. We choose where to put our attention, emotion, and intention. Emotions are energy. So, look to someone’s positive intent, especially when it appears she may have none.

"The everyday kindness of the back roads more than makes up for the acts of greed in the headlines," wrote Charles Kuralt in On the Road with Charles Kuralt.

"Keep what is worth keeping. And with the breath of kindness blow the rest away," wrote English novelist, DinahMulock Craik. Here's to making more opportunities to play, laugh, celebrate, and "say it better" in cultivating kindness as life's genuine "keeper."

Life contains few absolutes, and one of those few is that kindness usually cultivates connection, something we yearn for in a time-pressed, ear-to-the- cell-phone, relationship-diminished culture. After all, the heart can be our strongest muscle if we exercise it regularly. Yet being kind is not a guarantee of safety from hurt — nothing offers that failsafe comfort.

"Kindness and intelligence don't always deliver us from the pitfalls and traps: there are always failures of love, of will, of imagination. There is no way to take the danger out of human relationships," wrote Barbara Grizzuti Harrison in an article for McCall's magazine way back in 1975.

"When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives means the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving much advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a gentle and tender hand. The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing, not curing, not healing and face with us the reality of our powerlessness, that is a friend who cares," wrote HenriNouwen in Out of Solitude.

Years ago from my college classmate, Alasi Perdanan, I heard a Persian proverb, "With a sweet tongue of kindness, you can drag an elephant by a hair."

Kindness is often unspoken. "An eye can threaten like a loaded and leveled gun, or it can insult like hissing or kicking; or, in its altered mood, by beams of kindness, it can make the heart dance for joy," wrote RalphWaldo Emerson. At another time, Emerson wrote, "You cannot do a kindness too soon, for you never know how soon it will be too late."

"You may be sorry that you spoke, sorry you stayed or went, sorry you won or lost, sorry so much was spent. But as you go through life, you'll find -- you're never sorry you were kind," said Herbert Prochnow.

"Life is made up, not of great sacrifices or duties, but of little things, in which smiles and kindness and small obligations win and preserve the heart” said English chemistHumphreyDavy.

"We cannot tell the precise moment when friendship is formed. As in filling a vessel drop by drop, there is at last a drop that makes it run over. So in a series of kindness there is, at last, one which makes the heart run over," once wrote the Scottish lawyer and biographer, JamesBoswell.

"We are told that people stay in love because of chemistry, or because they remain intrigued with each other, because of many kindnesses, because of luck . . . But part of it has got to be forgiveness and gratefulness," wrote columnistEllen Goodman.

From an artist's perspective, ballet dancer Mikhail Baryshnikov once said, "The essence of all art is to have pleasure in giving pleasure."

February 10, 2007

This story has stuck with me for some while, so I am finally sharing it here. Thank you Cynthia Gorney for your finely-honed sense of justice and your fine writing.

• ''I had a doorbell moment this week.'' Patricia said to Tracy. Both have sons serving in the same Marine unit in Iraq. She is describing the fear that grabs her the moment her doorbell rings unexpectedly, thinking that the officer on the other side has come to tell her that her son is dead. Tracy understands.

Hint One: Through shared experience, expressed aloud, we adopt “shorthand” expressions and feel understood, closer and often even comforted.

• When Tracy’s son, Derrick was deployed, she knew that those who would most understand her feelings were other mothers in the same situation so she started a support group and web site, Marine Parents.

Wrote Gorney, “Draped over a banister in Tracy's house was an unwashed T-shirt Derrick had dropped during his last visit home. I thought Tracy was apologizing for her housekeeping, which I had already seen was much better than mine, but she cleared her throat and said that what I needed to understand was that she hadn't washed the T-shirt because if the Marine Corps has to send you your deceased child's personal effects, it launders the clothing first. ‘That means there's no smell,’' Tracy said.”

• “Tracy's closest friends in the world right now are other parents whose sons and daughters have served in Iraq or are serving there now.

Hint Three: Your strongest emotions right now can lead to your closest sources of support.

• “Tracy knows that the grandfather clock in Patricia's house chimes nine times when the other clocks say it's noon because the grandfather clock is set to Baghdad time.

Tracy knows that Patricia has figured out how to tell if someone is in her driveway by squinting at the reflection off a certain glass-covered picture in the dining room, so that if it should ever be two men in uniform, Patricia will know they have arrived before they start ringing the bell and before she is obliged to look directly at them and hear what they have come to say.”

Hint Four: The specific detail paints the picture that people will see in their mind’s eye and shapes how they will feel and remember what you say.

January 31, 2007

Even in her final month, dying of breast cancer, Molly Ivins wrote, "We are the people who run this country. We are the deciders and we need to raise hell.

A surge is not acceptable to the people in this country -- we have voted overwhelmingly against this war in polls (about 80 percent of the public is against escalation, and a recent Military Times poll shows only 38 percent of active military want more troops sent) and at the polls....

“Anyone who wants to talk knowledgably about our Iraq misadventure should pick up Rajiv Chandrasekaran's "Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Iraq's Green Zone." It's like reading a horror novel. You just want to put your face down and moan: How could we have let this happen? How could we have been so stupid?

As The Washington Post's review notes, Chandrasekaran's book "methodically documents the baffling ineptitude that dominated U.S. attempts to influence Iraq's fiendish politics, rebuild the electrical grid, privatize the economy, run the oil industry, recruit expert staff or instill a modicum of normalcy to the lives of Iraqis."

Yet she always maintained that she aimed her barbed Texan jibes at the action, not the person. With her book Bushwacked, she told NPR’s Bob Edwards, “that she doesn't hate the former Texas governor, with whom she attended high school. ‘In fact I've gone out of my way time and again to point out that he's a perfectly affable fellow, and he's not stupid and he's not mean," she says. "And it takes me aback to have people just make that assumption about me... What we're trying to show [in the book] is that whatever Bush's personal qualities are, his policies are having a genuinely deleterious effect on people's lives.’"

Just as she recalled Ann Richard’s aptitude for attracting attention to an outrage by wrapping the real truth in humor, many of us will long relish that talent in you, Molly.

Has someone been sending you emails rather than calling or meeting you face-to-face?

When you get together, does she or he stand back or avoid holding eye contact or speaking up? Could that description fit you?

While there are many possible reasons for their behavior, that person may, in fact, be chronically shy. Shy people tend to smile, touch, and speak less. In social situations they experience rapid heart beat, perspiration, and butterflies in the stomach.

Shy people think more negative thoughts about themselves, expect to be rejected, and perceive others as unapproachable. They are more likely to forget information presented to them when they believe they are being evaluated. In short, the world looks like a scary, unfriendly place, so—ironically—they often look unapproachable.

Most of my childhood I was quiet and kept to myself, mostly because I enjoyed daydreaming and reading. But most people thought I was shy. I had to learn to reach out more so people would be comfortable with me.

When you connect and care, you live better—not because those gestures are always acknowledged, but because it is your brave and warm expression of how you want to live your life.